WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION COLLABORATIVE CROSS-NATIONAL SURVEY

HBSC News

This study sought to analyse differences in the diet of a cross section of Scottish 15-year-olds. The analysis was carried out by Kate Levin from HBSC’s Scottish team - using data from the 2009-2010 Health Behaviour in School-aged Children survey - and included multi-level linear and logistic modelling.

The results showed that teenagers living in remote rural Scotland had the highest consumption frequency of vegetables (on average consuming on 6.68 days per week) and the lowest consumption frequency of sweets and crisps (on 4.27 and 3.02 days per week respectively). However, it was not in the major four cities of Scotland (Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee and Aberdeen) where adolescents were found to have the poorest diet, but in the geography described by the classification ‘other urban’ areas (large towns of between 10,000 and 125,000 residents).

Deprivation and rurality were independently associated with food consumption for all variables with the exception of fruit consumption. Sharing a family meal, dieting behaviour, food poverty and breakfast consumption did not differ by rurality. Variance at the level of the school was significant for the frequency of fruit and vegetable consumption and for irregular breakfast consumption, regardless of rurality.

Future research could build on this analysis by investigating why these urban–rural differences exist for consumption frequencies of ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’ foods.